Datadog veterans launch Niteshift to fight AI coding lock-in
Niteshift raises $7M to let companies switch between coding models freely.
Niteshift, an AI coding startup founded by two early Datadog engineers, has raised a $7 million seed round led by Greylock's Jerry Chen. The company's core bet is that enterprises will want to avoid locking their sensitive code into model makers like OpenAI and Anthropic, which increasingly launch competing apps. Co-founder and CEO Sajid Mehmood compares this to Datadog's early multicloud business, where e-commerce companies refused to run on Amazon Web Services out of fear of retail competition. Niteshift's platform routes between different coding agents (Claude Code, Codex, open-source models) based on project needs, charging per-minute usage like a cloud provider instead of per-token.
The startup enters a crowded market with competitors like Cursor, Cognition ($1B raised), Amazon Bedrock, and OpenRouter ($113M raised). However, Mehmood emphasizes the founding team's deep experience scaling Datadog through similar growing pains. Big-name angels include Reid Hoffman, Datadog's Olivier Pomel and Alexis Lê-Quôc, and Reflection AI's Misha Laskin. Niteshift positions itself not as a replacement for coding agents but as infrastructure to reduce dependence on any single vendor, appealing to companies wary of the "SaaSpocalypse" as AI labs move into vertical software markets.
- Niteshift raised $7M seed from Greylock, with angels like Reid Hoffman and Datadog's founders.
- Routes between coding models (Claude, Codex, open-source) to avoid vendor lock-in.
- Charges per-minute usage (like cloud providers) instead of per-token pricing.
Why It Matters
Companies can adopt AI coding without fearing that their vendor will become a competitor.